I currently work at a popular breakfast joint that is known for its waffles, among other things. Weekends are especially hectic here, and staff is doubled on Saturday and Sunday.

Most of the time, customers don’t know — or maybe don’t care — just how much it takes to keep everything running smoothly and how tired and hungry every staff member is when a rush lasts several hours.

One Saturday, I’m working a more hectic shift than usual. A couple I have waited on before comes in and sits in my section. They are always extremely pleasant and patient, as they notice just how busy I am with all of my tables on the weekends. I do my best to remain calm and friendly as I run around like a headless chicken making sure all of my customers are taken care of.

When this couple finishes, they ask how credit card tips are distributed. The server gets 100% of credit card receipts from their books. I explain this to them, and they walk up to the register. After finishing the transaction, I take the receipt to enter the tip and place it into its correct box.

As I look down, the couple says, “That is real.”

I haven’t had time to actually look, but when I do, I notice they’ve left me a $100 tip! I thank them profusely and then quickly shuffle out of customer view to shed a tear of joy, as that tip, while always being appreciated, made me sigh in relief knowing that my financial situation just improved greatly from what my husband and I discovered last night.

To everyone who has worked food service, or just understands the amount of work going into making your experience a pleasant one, thank you! Even a 20% tip goes a long way to help your server! A 200% tip might just make them cry, though!

Related:
Tipped To Be A Good Day, Part 2
Tipped To Be A Good Day

Due to bad experiences in the past, I never put a customer’s change in the drawer until the transaction is concluded. A woman and her young son (maybe six or seven?) are making a purchase.

Me: “That’s $9.95, please.”

The customer hands me a ten, and I give out five cents of change.

Customer: “Wait! I gave you a twenty!”

Me: “No, ma’am, you gave me a ten. It’s still here, see?”

Customer: “How do I know that’s the same ten I gave you?”

Me: “I haven’t put anything back in my drawer yet. You didn’t give me a twenty.”

Customer: “You’re lying! Call your manager! You’ll be in trouble for stealing my twenty!”

Customer’s Son: “Momma, I saw you give her a ten!”

The customer glares at her son and then at me, but she silently takes her five-cent coin and drags her son toward the exit.

As they walk away, she whispers harshly to her son.

Customer: “I told you that lying is okay when Mommy does it!”

I had a regular customer who would joke about having printed the note all the time when I checked for counterfeit bills. At one point, the conversation went like this.

Regular: “Oh, the note is fine; I printed it this morning.”

I slid the note back to him.

Me: “In that case, I cannot accept this. Do you have a card with which you can pay?”

Regular: “No, but I’m just joking. You know that, right?”

Me: “You just admitted to trying to pay with a counterfeit note. I cannot accept this note — or any cash payment from you now. Do you have a card with which you can pay?”

As he got more irate, my manager got involved. But this was a rare manager — one who had my back. The regular did not have a card, so he did not get his shopping that day.

I was working in a restaurant when a twenty-something guy came in alone to have dinner and sat in my section in the bar area. A couple of young ladies sat at the table next to him. He chatted them up and ended up buying them multiple rounds of drinks.

He’d been there pushing three hours when he handed me a credit card to pay the ~$140 tab. The card only had a business name, and on the signature line, it said, “Not valid without company ID.”

Guy: “I don’t have my company ID. I left it in my hotel room, which is a forty-five-minute drive away.”

Me: “Do you have any other form of payment?”

Guy: “No.”

He got upset that I wouldn’t return the card to him as it was possibly stolen or fraudulent.

He ended up returning ninety minutes later. He showed his company ID, paid, and left $0 tip.

I’d made note of his name and the company name, and later that night, I looked up the company. It turned out it was a multi-billion-dollar company based in Japan but with a US branch about two hours from me. I wrote a letter to the company suggesting they emphasize to their employees the importance of having their company ID when using the corporate card. I explained what had happened that night and made a point to question whether it was intended for employees to use the corporate card to hit on women. I mailed three copies: one each to the CEO, the CFO, and the head of Human Resources.

About two weeks later, my coworker asked me what I had done. The guy had come in all pissed off the night before — my day off — looking for me. Things must not have gone too well for him. Don’t blame others for your own f***-ups!

Back in my days as a customer service representative for a cellphone carrier, when phone contracts were a thing, it was decided that the admin fees were going up by $0.05 per account. Management decided (rightfully so) that people were going to call in and use this as “a financial burden” to get out of their contracts, so they directed us to credit the $0.05 by how many months they had left in their contract — if they had multiple lines, then it was based on the one with the longest contract — for which the longest time would be twenty-four months.

Then, this guy called.

Customer: “This $0.05 increase is unacceptable! This will financially break me! I demand to be let out of my contract — with no early termination fee!”

Per management direction, I credited him $1.20; he had signed up for a two-year contract two days before the fee increased.

Customer: “I demand that you remove that credit and let me out of my contract!”

Me: “Sir, I’m afraid neither is an option. When you mentioned that the fee was a financial burden, we had to issue that credit.”

The guy got mad and hung up, and I noted the account accordingly.

I had a sneaking suspicion he’d call back, so I kept the account open and checked it later in the day. And yeah, he called back and got some new hire who was known not to look at the notes, and they took off the credit. (They didn’t let him out of the contract, thankfully.) I reapplied it, referenced my previous notes, and reiterated that it came from management and should not be removed.